ABSTRACT
In Architecture and the Pathognomic, Hejduk ominously calls the intricate relationships of architecture with other disciplines a ‘pathological wound’, a notion that Connah has referred to as a ‘hump’. Yet it is in the questioning of disciplinary boundaries that one can unravel intricacies in the production of meaning in the discipline. Through an analysis of Terragni’s Danteum and Eisenman’s Moving Arrows, Eros and Other Errors, this chapter considers the production of the architectural brief when disciplines such as literature and poetry are translated to an architectural agenda. These conceptual projects demonstrate how the brief can be conceived as a ‘pre-site’ for production of architectural knowledge. It is not surprising that external, ostensibly implausible programmes, such as the structural aspects of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ narratives or Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ can be translated to spatial and formal languages. What is surprising is the fact that these texts offer new insights, as aspects that were implicit in literature become explicit when they are translated in architecture, a different medium of operation. The discussion of the two projects demonstrates that although based on external schemas, they have an inherent disciplinary logic. The disciplinary boundaries between architecture and literature are stretched in these projects, but they do not disappear, since architecture as the medium of expression intrinsically impacts both works.
